Fake Flowers Don't Wilt
by sincerelymendacious
Summary: Lili's coming over to Dogen's house to hang out and he wants to give her a present. Surely a flower that she likes from his mother's garden would be appropriate?


"Dogen, honey," Mama said, her hand wrapped around his wrist in a manner that was not tight enough to hurt but still strong enough to prevent him from uprooting the purple flower he clutched out of its plot. "Why are you trying to pick Mama's zinnias?"

Mama didn't sound mad, but then, she rarely did. Her tone was questioning but patient, and her voice was as clear and soft as the wind-chimes that hung from the porch roof. It made Dogen feel at ease, even though it was obvious that she wasn't happy to have discovered him out in the garden at this early hour. "I'm picking this flower," he answered, his fingers tightening their hold on the slender green stem.

"Yes, I can see that," Mama said, giving his hand a gentle squeeze. "I'm just wondering why."

"Uh…" It took Dogen about five seconds to process that inquiry, and then a few more after that for his mouth to form the response. Mama made no attempt to hurry him up; her lips curved in a gentle smile, free of the strain that tended to creep into the expressions of most other people who interacted with Dogen for an extended period of time. "I'm picking this flower for Lili," he said, a pink the same shade as the nearby roses blooming across his cheeks- even just saying her name made him feel like he had just seen an adorable kitten waiting for him to pet it. He liked how there were only two letters in her name -"L" and "I"- but the first "Li" sounded completely different from the second. Plus, he never had trouble spelling it whenever he signed her birthday or Christmas cards.

Mama's smile widened, deepening the lines at the corners of her eyes (Riley's Feet, she called them, after the bird that nested in the tree outside of Dogen's window). "I see," she said, releasing Dogen's wrist. She brought her hand up and slipped it under his hat to ruffle his pale hair, the same color as her own. "It's a present for your friend."

Dogen nodded, letting go of the zinnia's stem and petting it's petals gently. "His name is Xavier," he said. "She really likes him. So I'm gonna give him to her as a gift." He was glad that Lili was not quite so close to the roses- those thorns looked like they could hurt!

"Oh." Mama paused the way she did whenever she had to give him bad news. "Dogen, that's a very sweet thought," she began slowly, "but I don't think that Lili would like it if you took Xavier out of his plot."

Dogen blinked. Only a few of those words had registered- 'Lili,' 'don't,' 'like' and 'Xavier', but they were enough to confuse and worry him. "But," he said, furrowing his brows as he pieced together the meaning of Mama's statement like it was a jigsaw puzzle. "Lili likes flowers and she likes Xavier." He looked at his mother with wide eyes, unsure of what he was missing.

"Yes, Lili does like those things," Mama said, moving closer and putting her arm around Dogen's shoulders. He automatically leaned into her soft, comforting warmth. "What is Lili's special power? What is the thing she can do that you and I can't?"

"She can recite all of the titles of the True Psychic Tales comics from memory." She loved those comic books, and Dogen loved hearing her talk about them, even if he had trouble following their storylines.

Mama laughed. "Well, yes, she can do that," she said, "but what else?"

"Um…" As he thought, his brain made the connection between Lili's unique ability and the flowers. "She can talk to flowers!" He clapped his hands, proud that he had figured that out.

"That's right!" Mama said, rewarding Dogen with a pat on the back. "And what do flowers need to survive?"

That was another poser. "I don't know, Mama." Even as he spoke, however, snippets of Ms. Vargas' lessons at the facility came back to him. "They need…" he began, struggling to bring an accurate image of the Daisy chart he had studied to his mind. "They need water…" provided by a pitcher with a pink heart on it, "sunlight," graciously supplied by a smiling sun, "and…" There was one more thing, what was it? Mama tapped him on the shoulder and then patted the soil once she had his attention. "Dirt! They need dirt!" Dogen declared, beaming.

"Exactly!" Mama smiled back, though there was seriousness clouding her eyes. "And how do you think Xavier would feel if you took him out of his dirt?"

"Hm." Dogen pulled at his ear as he considered how a flower would feel about anything. After some intense thought he came to the conclusion that Xavier would not much like that at all. "It would hurt him and he would cry," Dogen said, casting a sad look at the plant in question. It swayed forward a little, as though in agreement (though that may have just been the breeze). "And if Xavier cries, than Lili would hear it." The dots began to connect themselves into a very distressing image. "And that might make Lili cry." The idea of such a thing made Dogen's heart clench. He had only seen her cry once before, and that had been when those mean men had tried to kill her papa. "I don't want her to cry…"

Mama pulled him closer as he sniffled, resting his chubby cheek against her chest. "I know you don't, sweetie."

"I wanna give her a gift," he said, disappointed that the idea he'd thought very clever and good turned out to be wrong and bad, "because she's so pretty and nice."

"You can still give her a gift, Dogen," Mama said reassuringly. "Maybe you can't give her a flower out of the ground." She paused to think for a second. "But you can make her one."

Dogen scrunched his face up in confusion. "Make a flower?" How would he do that? He recalled that to make a flower you needed to have a seed, and Dogen didn't have any of those.

"We could use the pipe cleaners." Dogen stared up at Mama blankly, clueless as to what pipes had to do with flowers. "You know, those things we made the little barnyard animals out of!"

"Oh! The fuzzy tubes!" Dogen said, remembering the long, bendy sticks he and Mama had used to make their own farm. "Can we make a flower with those?"

Mama nudged him on the cheek. "I don't see why not," she said. "We made pigs and cows, didn't we? I'm sure we could figure out how to make a flower for Lili."

That was all the encouragement Dogen needed. "Can we make it right now?" he asked, his eyes shining with excitement.

"Breakfast first," Mama said as she helped him up from the earth. "You go get the supplies," she instructed as she took her son's hand in her own, "and I'll make us some cheesy eggs. That sound good?"

"Mmkay." Having established a plan of action, the two made their way out of the garden, leaving one very relieved zinnia behind.

They ended up making three flowers for Lili- a purple one meant to be Xavier's clone, a twisty blue hyacinth, and a pink and black one that looked like a daisy. Re-creating Xavier turned out to be harder than either he or Mama had thought it would be, as his big cluster of purple petals was difficult to replicate in pipe-cleaner form. "How about we just cut them really short, " Mama said after both of them became fed up with bending the pipe-cleaners inward and not having them stick the way they were supposed to. "And then we can just tie them together at end? The effect will be the same!" Dogen nodded, trusting Mama to know the best way to make a flower.

As Mama worked on the zinnia, Dogen amused himself with the other pipe cleaners. He liked the way they felt on his fingertips, all soft and velvety, like a puppy's ear. _It feels like Lili's dog's ear, _he thought as he ran his fingertips over a blue pipe-cleaner. Lili's dog was an energetic little Doberman Pinscher, and Dogen liked him almost as much as he liked Lili. He had trouble pronouncing the dog's name though- it was something with an 'M', but more often than not Dogen just called him Phisty, which always made Lili's Papa laugh when he heard it.

The pipe-cleaners were also fun because you could twist them any way you wanted without breaking them. It wasn't like working with paper, which Dogen always seemed to tear, or with clay, which was fun to touch but always got stuck underneath Dogen's fingernails and never ended up looking the way he wanted it to. When he got bored of enjoying the feel of the fuzzy stick he began wrapping it around his index finger. "Look, Mama," he said when there was no more pipe-cleaner to twist, "it's a spint!"

Mama glanced up from the purple pipe-cleaners she was tying together. "Honey, what on earth is a spint?" She examined the looping coil around Dogen's finger, and then understood. "Did you mean a splint?" she corrected with a note of humor in her voice?

"Yeah," Dogen answered, pulling the 'splint' tighter around his finger. "That's what the nurse put on Uncle Roger's finger when he shut it in the drawer."

"Your Uncle Roger." Mama shook her head. "I don't think there's anybody more accident-prone out there in the world." She floated a knitting needle and a pipe-cleaner into her hand. "Here," she said, lining up the tip of the needle and the pipe-cleaner so that their ends were even. "Wrap your splint around this like you did with your finger."

"Mmkay!" He took the pipe cleaner off and carefully wound it around the pipe-cleaner/needle combination, sticking his tongue out as he concentrated. The end product of this endeavor was a long, narrow flower with a pointed tip. Mama said that this flower was called hyacinth, and that they were usually more blue-purple but this color worked fine. "It's pretty," Dogen said, taking it back from Mama after she removed the knitting needle. He twirled his creation between his fingers. "Do you think Lili has them in her garden?"

Mama considered the question for a moment and then said that she wasn't sure. "I don't remember seeing any the last time we were there," she said as she tied the stem to the spikey purple bulb to make the original flower.

Dogen decided that he would give her this one alongside Xavier Jr. "Can we make her another one?" he asked hopefully. He remembered Mama once saying that "good things come in threes"- or something like that- and he figured that if he was going to give Lili a present it should be as good as possible.

Mama glanced down at her wristwatch. "I think so," she said. "We have about twenty minutes before we need to get ready to go to Dr. Storch 's office. That should be enough time." She looked over at assortment of pipe-cleaners scattered on the dining room table. "What flower should we make?"

Dogen wasn't sure what type of flower it should be, but he knew exactly what color he wanted to use. "A black one."

Mama tilted her head to the side quizzically. "A black flower?" she asked skeptically.

"Yep," Dogen said. "Lili's favorite color is black." Lili thought black was a good color, even though most people thought black was ugly and scary. Lili thought that lots of things that were supposed to be bad were actually good- she wasn't afraid of rats, and he remembered the way she had let a tiny spider crawl all the way up her arm one time. It was probably why she was Dogen's friend when all of the other kids were too worried that he'd blow up their head to want to play with him.

"That is true," Mama tapped her chin as she contemplated the black flower they would create. "How about we make a black and pink one?" she suggested. "I think she likes pink too. She has that one plaid skirt that she wears all the time."

And that was how Lili's third flower was brought into being. It had alternating black and pink 'petals' curling outward from a coiled purple pipe-cleaner that served as the flower's centerpiece. "Why not?" Mama said as she glued it to the rest of the flower. "We can make our flower look however we want. Lili likes purple better than yellow anyway, doesn't she?"

Making this flower was more fun than making the other ones. Dogen enjoyed rolling the edges of the pipe-cleaners up into the daisy's petals; they reminded him of the snails he often saw out in the yard. "Lili likes snails," he commented to Mama as he pressed the spiral petal inward to get it into the right shape. "She thinks it's cool that they eat detritus."

"Detritus?" Mama repeated.

"Dead things."

"Oh!" Mama laughed, finding that funny for some reason.

It was about 9:30 when they finished the little 'bouquet' of hand-made flowers. Lili would not be able to receive her present for a few hours more, as she was not due at their house until after three-thirty. It was a week-day, which meant that she was at school, "doing absolutely nothing" as she put it. "School is super boring. You sit next to the same obnoxious people and learn the same things you did the day before," she once explained to Dogen. "Really, you aren't missing out on anything."

The hours until the time of Lili's expected arrival stretched longer than the silly putty his Dad had gotten him for his birthday last year. Even with all of the appointments he and Mama had to go to- talking time with , lessons with Ms. Vargas, check-up with and hat-check-up with - Dogen still felt like the minutes were dragging their feet. A feeling like someone had shaken up a can of soda inside of his stomach plagued him through all of these appointments, which made him antsy and less tolerant of his closed-in, clinical surroundings.

It did not go unnoticed by his doctors, who were used to more docile behavior from him. "Feisty today," Dr. Ueda commented after the lights flickered on and off for the fourth time in ten minutes.

"He's a bit excited, yes," Mama said apologetically, casting an uneasy glance upward. "His friend is coming over later." She lay her hand on the back of Dogen's neck. "Dogen, you need to calm down. I know you want to see Lili but you need to be patient and let do his job. What happens when you misbehave?"

"We all have to stay longer," Dogen answered. He straightened his previously slouched position. "Sorry Doctor U."

Doctor Ueda didn't hold a grudge. "That's alright," he said, sliding the magnifying lense attached to his headband over his right eye, making it look much bigger than the other. "I just need to check the psi-blockers and then we'll be done." He leaned forward, unscrewing the covering that protected the various gauges that measured things Dogen couldn't spell or pronounce. "So," Dr. Ueda began conversationally, "you got yourself a date?"

Dogen almost nodded before remembering that he wasn't supposed to move his head while Dr. Ueda was checking his hat. "Lili's coming over," he said. "I made her flowers."

"Made her flowers?" Dr. Ueda asked as he tinkered.

"Out of pipe-cleaners," Mama said.

"Oh, right-on."

"I'm gonna give her the flowers," Dogen continued, the bubbly feeling rising up within him again. He held himself still, even though he wanted to bounce in his seat.

"I bet she'll like that," Dr. Ueda said. "What kind of flowers did you make for her?" He whistled when Dogen finished his very detailed description of them. "Those sound awesome! Hey, my anniversary is coming up, you think you could make a bouquet for me to give my husband?"

"Mmkay," Dogen said agreeably.

They wrapped up this final appointment and were home shortly after two-thirty. An hour remained before Lili's expected arrival, and to Dogen that hour was passing more slowly than all of the ones that had come before it. Nothing he did- not playing with his barnyard animals, not working in his activity books, not chatting with Riley's babies nesting on the branch outside of his window- helped the seconds go by any faster. Nor did they distract him from his anticipation. He felt like a tightly coiled spring, brimming with energy and eagerness. To keep himself from bouncing all over his room he pictured how the moment when he presented his bouquet to Lili would play out. "I made you these," he would say, "because you're so nice and pretty and you're not scared of me blowing up your head and I have so much fun when you come over to play."

Envisioning how Lili would react was hard, since he'd never given anybody but Mama a gift before, and this felt completely different from that for some reason. He hoped that she would like it. He hoped that she would smile at him in the way that made him feel like he had just pet an incredibly fluffy bunny, that her eyes would light up the way they did whenever she saw something that made her happy. Most of all, he hoped that she would say "Thank you Dogen! I'm really glad you're my friend!"

As slowly as time was creeping by, it was still moving forward, and eventually Mama telepathically informed him that his wait was nearly over. _Come down to the foyer, Dogen. She's here!_

Dogen shot up from his spot on the floor and scrambled out of his room, moving as fast as his little legs could carry him. He hopped down the stairs, making a loud 'thump' each time he landed. _Soft feet! _Mama chastised, and he forced himself to descend in a less noisy fashion. The final step almost tripped him, but he managed to catch himself before he fell on his face. "Is she here?" he asked as he came over to Mama, his eyes bright.

"She's coming up the driveway," Mama answered. She looked at him, her gaze searching his person. "Where's the present?"

"Present?" Dogen asked, so worked up by Lili's rapidly approaching arrival that he had forgotten the reason for his excitement.

"The flowers for Lili."

"Oh!" He raised his right hand up. "Right here!" Except they weren't in his hand at all. He had left them behind in his room in his haste to get downstairs. "I gotta go get them," he said as he turned to do just that.

"No running up the stairs!" Mama called after him.

Fetching the bouquet took longer than Dogen expected. He returned to his room remembering his purpose ( a miracle on its own) but forgetting where he had put the flowers. There ensued about a minute of searching- or rather, Dogen moving from one corner of the room to the other, his eyes drifting over all of the fixtures. There was so much stuff in contained within his room, and the furniture, toys, books, crayons, blankets and other assorted possessions all crowded into his vision, making it impossible for him to pick the flowers out among them. Frustration burned inside of him, and he would have been completely overwhelmed by it were it not for the helpful advice of one of the baby robins. _Check your nightstand, _she said, gesturing towards it with her wing.

That was where he found it, neatly placed in the drawer on top of the rulebook that he and Mama reviewed every night before bed. The reasons he had hid them there were unknown, and not dwelled upon for long. He thanked the baby bird for her aide and then made his way back down to the foyer.

The sound of two voices stopped him halfway down the stairs. Through the posts he could see Mama and Lili talking by the door. Mama was asking Lili how she was and Lili was saying that she was okay, like she usually did. Lili's Papa was not there, which wasn't very surprising anymore. He used to drop her off every time when she first started coming over, but now a bald man who waited for her in a sleek black car did it. That made Dogen kind of sad. He liked Lili's Papa because he looked like a king from one of the storybooks Mama read to him, and also because he was apparently one of the reasons why Dogen had been allowed to keep the part of his brain that let him talk to animals. A secret part of him wished that his Dad was more like Lili's. Her Papa was also often away on business trips, but Lili said that he called every night before she went to bed. Dogen's Dad only talked to him on holidays and the day either before or after his birthday.

He continued down, his gaze on her face as he descended the stairs. The black smudges she put around her eyes were thicker than usual, making her look kind of like a racoon. Dogen smiled. There were a group of racoons that liked to hang out around the garbage cans at night, all of them so cute with their little paws, twitching noses, and the markings that looked like masks around their eyes.. Mama didn't like him talking to them, but he thought they were funny, and snuck snacks out to them when he could. _I'll tell her that she looks like a racoon. I think she'll like that._

Mama looked up when he reached the final step. "Oh, there he is!" she said as he waddled over to where they stood. "Dogen, are you ready to show Lili what you made?"

Dogen certainly thought he was ready as he sped his steps up, hiding the bouquet behind his back. That certainty fled when he came to a stop in front of her. Lili's full attention was on him but she didn't appear very eager to see his present. Dr. Storch had a 'What Are You Feeling?' poster hanging in her office, and after consulting it mentally he had to say that Lili looked like she was feeling 'annoyed.' It was not the look he had imagined seeing on her face, and it threw him off badly. Nervousness seized him, and all he could do was stand there and stare up at her with wide eyes.

Seconds ticked by. Lili shifted from foot to foot, readjusting her backpack strap. Mama looked between the two kids, her gaze shifting from one to the other, growing concerned. _Go on, honey, _she thought to him, _don't keep her waiting._

The gentle encouragement prodded him into action. He removed his arm from behind his back and stiffly held it out to present his gift. She flinched, panic flashing across her features momentarily. Then she relaxed, as though realizing that the flowers in Dogen's hand were of no threat to her person. "Oh." She took them from Dogen, turning them over her hands, the corners of her lips slowly lifting upwards. "They're fake," she said, a relieved sigh blowing out with her words.

Dogen nodded. "They're, um…" What were they called again? "They're the fuzzy sticks."

"Pipe-cleaners," Mama said.

"Yeah, those."

Lili traced her fingers up the stems, which were tied together at their ends, looking much happier than she had a second before. _She still looks kind of sad, _Dogen could not help but notice. "They're really cool, Dogen," she said, stepping forward to hug him. "Thanks."

Dogen leaned into the embrace, more than a little confused. She'd reacted the way he had hoped she would; she had smiled, said 'thank you', and had even given him a hug. So why did it feel like there was something wrong? Was it because of how irritated Lili had looked when he had first seen her? Or was it the way she had initially recoiled from his present? _But they weren't real flowers. Mama said that fake flowers wouldn't make her sad or scared. _He was still puzzling over it as he followed Lili out to the garden.

Five minutes of mulling it over didn't bring him any further enlightenment, and Lili, sitting quietly next to him, didn't give him any answers. It wasn't unusual for them to start off their playdates in this silent manner. Lili liked to spend a few minutes greeting all of Mama's flowers, which didn't bother Dogen because it was great just being near her. He especially didn't mind it today, since he had so much to contemplate. He didn't know what she was saying to the flowers, but whatever it was must have been interesting since she was leaning towards the plants as she knelt, the bouquet held in her lap.

When Lili was done saying hi to the flowers, she gave Dogen a quick poke on the cheek. That was their signal that she was finished, and that it was time for Dogen to tune in. Without the physical contact, Dogen would often miss anything she said at first when she started talking out loud, which would lead to her repeating herself. "I really like these flowers you made me," she began, pointing down at them. "This one looks like Xavier. And this one," she moved her finger over to the daisy, " has awesome colors."

Those were a lot of words for Dogen to take in, but the word 'awesome' usually indicated something good. "Black is the color you like the most. That's why I used it," he explained, clasping his hands together. "And Mama said you liked pink too, so we made some of it pink."

"I- wow." Lili looked away, bringing the flowers up to her face like she was trying to smell them. "I didn't know you noticed."

That was an odd statement. "You wear black all the time," he pointed out. "And you put black all over your eyes." He remembered what he had wanted to say to her earlier. "I like it because it makes you look like a racoon. I like racoons because they're cute, and you're cute too."

At this Lili laughed, though she was quick to smother it. Dogen wished she hadn't. Laughter was not something he heard often outside of the T.V. shows he watched; usually he only heard it from Mama. "Aw, Dogen," she said, her cheeks turning as pink as a kitten's nose. "I think you're the only person whose ever said that and meant it as a compliment."

She sounded pleased and that encouraged him to continue. "I wanted to give you a gift because I think you're so nice," he said, proud of himself for expressing that sentiment so clearly. "Since you like Xavier, I wanted to give him to you. But Mama said that would make you sad, so we made you flowers instead, because I want you to be happy, not sad."

"Yeah, Xavier told me about that part," Lili said. "We're both really glad you didn't pick him, or any of the other flowers." She went quiet, her brows narrowing and her mouth turning downward in a frown. "There's a bunch of wildflowers that grow by the playground at my school." She paused to allow Dogen to absorb the information. "Today, a boy at my school tried to give me a bunch of them as a present." Her nose wrinkled in disgust, her grip on the fake flowers tightening.

He could feel the tendrils of her anger slithering into his mind. He grimaced- he didn't like feeling anger, because that particular emotion always got him into a lot of trouble and scared the people around him. "Did you hear them crying?" he asked softly, his stomach clenching uncomfortably.

She seemed to realize the effect that her anger was having on him, because she took a deep breath in, and then blew it out before answering. "Yeah, I did." She kicked a rock over with the toe of her boot. "I told him not to pick flowers like that and he got mad at me. He said 'they're just flowers, they can't feel anything.'" She rolled her eyes. "Whatever. I don't care."

It seemed to Dogen that she did care, very much so. "I'm sorry that boy was so mean to you and the flowers," Dogen said, feeling like someone ought to apologize to her, since the boy obviously hadn't.

"You don't need to apologize." Lili scooted over and put her arms around him, giving him a side-hug. Her sweet, floral scent- he didn't know what it was exactly, only that it was less intense than lavender- flooded his nostrils. "You didn't do anything wrong. You aren't like other boys." She rested her head against his shoulder. "You actually care about how other people feel. Everyone should be cool like you." She sighed heavily. Dogen patted her on the back, the way Mama did when he was feeling bad. He couldn't say he understood all of what had happened to Lili at school (why would the boy say that flowers didn't have feelings when Lili had told him that they did? And who was he, anyway?) but he knew she was sad about it, and that made Dogen sad for her.

She pulled herself upright after a moment, some of her unhappiness having faded away. "I don't want to talk about jerks anymore," she declared. "Do these flowers have names?" Dogen shook his head, and so Lili decided that naming them should be their next task. "We could call this one Xavier the Second, but that's not very creative. I think we can do better." After half an hour of discussion and at least five discarded names per flower, the three became known as Xavide, Loopy, and Daisy Lugosi.

A decade later Dogen Boole would be surprised to see them displayed in a small flower-pot on the bookshelf in Lili's room. "You kept these?" he asked as he took them down from the pot, smiling as he remembered the day he had given them to her.

"Why are you so surprised?" she replied, coming over to him from the doorway. "You think I would throw something you made for me away?"

Dogen thought for moment. "Yeah, if they were from ten years ago."

"Well, you were wrong," Lili said, walking over and taking the flowers out of his hand. "It's not like they wilt," she said before pulling him into a kiss.


End file.
